Yes, this is the same Hardi lap siding that you buy at Home Depot, Lowes or just about any other home improvement store. It's real easy to install and like you mentioned, it's fire resistant, bug proof and it will not rot. I've put scrap pieces into my burn piles and found them still intact a week later!!! That's a full week of burning hundreds of trees type of burning.
The stain is like jello in the can. You paint it on with a brush and just paint it on. The painting of the brush gives you the random colorations. One thing that I learned the hard way is to never go up and down the wall. It is very important to stain the length of each Hardi board one at a time. If you go up and down the wall, you will end up with a very ugly, unatural looking line. Left or right is good, up or down is bad. hahaha
It takes a full day to dry. Don't rush it.
You can stain right over the caulking and anything else. It will make it all blend together. It's not really a stain, but just looks like one. It's really some sort of weird paint that makes whatever you put it on look like wood. There are at least a dozen different colors, but none were what we liked except for the oak. Walmart has small samples that you can buy for around $5 each.
I used cheap chip brushes that I throw away after each use. It's not about a nice finish with this stuff, just total coverage.
I don't know how long it will last, but since it's designed for exterior doors, I'm hopeful that it's a permanent. If and when it fails, I'll update the thread with pics. My ultimate goal is to build some rental cabins with this as the siding. If it doesn't hold up, then this is a failure and I go to plan B.
As of right now, I don't know if I'd risk trying it on a house. I know that if it fails, you can always paint over it, but I don't think you can try a different stain or wood looking technique.
As for the cabins in Taho, I think they are all real wood. At least the ones I've seen have been either full logs, or log siding vineer to look like log homes. I've never seen the Hardi done like this in person, just the pics that Victor shared. His home looks amazing and it might be the way to go. I'm trying this as an alternative with off the shelf products that I can buy any day of the week right here.
